Is it time for Aural Moon to expand??
 

I'm sorry if this is not the appropriate place to bring this up, but I wonder if it isn't time for Aural Moon to expand its listener base by adding another 50-100 connections to the server (and preferably at 80k or better).

I've been talking with a few people about Aural Moon recently, and one of the comment that has come up of late is that they don't try to log on much because when they do so, the server is full so they go somewhere else.

It seems to me that during the weekdays (American time), the server is at or near capacity for several hours. Anyway, I was wondering what the regulars here thought about it. It seems like a lot of the progressive stations get nothing for listeners, yet AM and Delicious Agony manage to get over 100.

Now there are new stations cropping up like AOL's progressive stations. While I'm happy AOL even considered a progressive rock station, there's something a little stomach turning about a big name getting involved. My worry is that they will capture eventually a large portion of the listening share, but they won't deal in progressive rock much beyond fairly typical acts.

Anyway, just a thought up for discussion.


- Cozy

Part of the problem with this is that we currently have to pay for the stream by connection. Adding connections will simply increase the cost for the stream. It's like that on every site I've seen that even considers hosting streaming audio. I'm investigating alternatives, but of those I've seen, they're either too expensive or too limiting for our usage.

We're still looking, though.

Roger -Dot- Lee, BOY am I looking.

It is an interesting dilemma. From a listener standpoint, there's probably a market out there right now for 3-4 times what we have. But the main thing is no one has a monetary interest or anything to gain other than the love of the music.

It is very to difficult to maintain a solid base while having basically no funding. It's a testament to Jim, Roger, and Vax that they keep it going without much (or any) $ support.

Sometime in the next year, if all goes according to plan, I should be involved in a company that will have computer support and possibly the resources available for an expansion. I just hope the company grows enough to be ready when and if Aural Moon is ready.

That's the frustrating thing....the demand is there, and the musicians I cross paths with support us.

So, to me, it's not inappropriate, it's a great question, and I just hope to be part of it when the Moon flourishes as it could.

If any one can help me come up with a business model that would turn Aural Moon into a break even proposition, we would love to expand. As it is, I spend well over a thousand dollars a year to keep Aural Moon running, and that's net of the money received from the 128K patrons. It would be 2.5X that much without the patrons. I absolutely intend to maintain Avian's vision of NOT having commercials on the stream.

Okay, well that helps to at least get an idea. You guys would like/have intention to expand, but finances are the chief concern.

I have a few suggestions that are fairly obvious ones.


1) Besides the patron program, start a smaller general donation drive. It might bring in only $50/month, but anything would help.

2) Find sponsers/investors. You could do something along the lines of CD Universe/Amazon. On the "buy now" links, you could link it up with some popular vendors like Lasers Edge, Syn-Phonic or Wayside. It's heavy in logistics, but it might help.

3) Another sponser benefit instead of commercial space "per se", might be to do some programming that highlights artists on a particular label. For example, you got all those Mellow albums. You could do a Mellow hour once or twice /week that highlights songs from those artists. Instead of DJ programming, you could have little 30 sec blurps during the broadcast reinforcing what you are highlighting.


4) Win the lottery and buy AOL. :D



- Cozy

Well, as you know (Jim, Roger and a few other listeners do) I have a server here that is earmarked to take on the AM Web Site and the bandwidth to support it. It's quite alot of server -- in fact, it's probably overkill -- and I doubt AM will outgrow this. Moving the AM web site to this server is going to take the time -- nothing more as I'm footing the bill for server and bandwidth -- but that time is almost as hard to come by as funds for AM. Roger Lee giving up his unemployed status (I'm happy for him too) has eroded his free time. Anyway, once that move is effected, that will free up some funds which I would hope Jim will devote to more streams, etc. for the station.

I'd love to host the AM station too. The issue there is not the hardware but the bandwidth. I pay significant fees for T1 (DS1 ATM) and there's simply no way I can afford DS3 ATM. Believe me, if I could there'd be no lack of streams. A DS3 could easily support 1000+ 56K streams.

We need to get some more of the listeners to pony up some money. The $50 fee is NOTHING... That's less than 15¢ a day.

Commercials? Please, never! I'm not even that fond of the station IDs.

1) Is generally supported by us hard core people, but not necessarily by the masses. It's worth a try, if needed.

2) and 3) are part of the business model that's being developed by the company I've been mentioning. But as it is presented this blurs the line into advertising. Until the model is developed (we do have an idea Jim but it's unfortunately quite a few months away) this may be all we can do. Jim's contributions earn him the right to keep the vision intact.

4) I hate the lottery more than vax hates Microsoft.

This should be reevaluated and discussed often...I'd like to see Aural moon grow.

Good points by all.


Regarding #2and/or#3, I can do a little more research on this if needed. I'm sure I can rally up some interest. Unless you have a lot of money or situations in your favor that allow you to skirt price (having your own hosting space, etc), with growth may indeed come some sort of volley into advertisment. I agree as well, that I find full-on advertisment not a good idea, but this at least gives those that would sponser something for their efforts.

I wonder how much the costs would change if someone else did the hosting....

Also, I think it's very important to at least get an idea of how much AM could expand. I would think unless you went more commercial and were picked up by a carrier that anything over 500 listeners would be a pipe dream. But I certainly think there's market for 300+. I agree let's discuss it more.

- Cozy

Wouldn't the simplest solution be to have a yearly pledge drive targetting the listeners?

We talked about this alot when Avian, Jim and Roger were considering changing "white" to some other format. Sorry...I don't have the techie lingo, but some of you will remember.

Various levels of pledging, including the level that gets you the 128k stream, and a one time a year pledge so that nobody has to keep track of monthly listener pledge amounts.

I have no idea how much money we're talking to expand the station...but if Jim thinks that the active listener base could support it, I'm willing to put my money where my ears are.

OK. Here's the new model... (Tongue in cheek)

Rule #1: Everyone that wants to request must have a paypal-like account.

Rule #2: Every request debits the requester's account by 1¢/minute of airplay. (rounded up to the next minute... hell, if the cell phone companies can get away with it, why not AuralMoon)

Rule #3: Everytime you request the same song, the price for you doubles.

This would certailly put money in the stations pockets and limit the replay of certain "epics" over and over and over again. You know who you are!


Let's see how this would work...

Supper's Ready would net the station 23¢ every time it's requested. Assuming a certain requester really likes Supper's Ready, it would cost 46¢ the next time it's requested and then 92¢.... $1.84... $3.68... $7.36... $14.72... pretty soom, they'll have spent enough to have purchased a copy of the song -- HELL, THE WHOLE CD -- and may actually consider it instead of over-requesting it. See, everybody wins!

Assuming all 24 hrs of a day was requests, this would net the station about $400.00 a month; $5000 a year. More, of course, if we have habitual requesters (and we do) and habitual "epic" requesters (and we most certainly do)!

Substitute Supper's Ready for Blue Shift, Sebastian Hardie, KC, Yes, GY!BE, The Flower Kings, etc. etc...

The monies are staggering. :D

For our UK friends, substitute p for ¢. :p (Exchange rates are awful!)

Poodle piddle. It's not OUR fault that they don't use the good olde greenback. One for one, I say!

(said tongue in cheek, since I've only seen one overrequester that WASN'T a US based carbon unit. So it really wouldn't be a problem, I suppose)

Basically I likethis idea:D , there would be some ppl spending after half a year 50 bucks to listen their GYBE!, good price for our suffering....:D

But, seriously speaking, I do not think that this reflects the spirit of this station.:rolleyes:

Comming back to the original thread it would be great to have a possibility to increase the number of listeners in order to be able to share prog and this magnific place with more people in the world. But of course I see also the economic problem in this, bearing in mind that this should be a non commercial site (and I am more than 100% in favour of that).

But arising some funds means also to be a little organized in the only organized funds arising area, which is the 128 k stream. I am on that stream now since March 2004, but no mail came, that I have to renew this privilege, and I guess, no other moonie got something like that. Or have I been forgotten with the change of ownership? (US $ 50 on the way to you Jim in a couple of min for the next year...:) )

But maybe we should think also about another idea. Some of us are able and willing to donate some more. But for this I e.g. would like to have a proposal from management with the goal and the costs involved (like the new chat, which never was realized due to technical reasons, but had some funds collected) in order to make this goal also our private and personal goal.

I repeat myself: I hope, that AM remains an abolute non commercial station, only supported by the listeners.

In order to do it right, we may need more than what can be collected from us.

By the way vax, we should include Dark Matter also;)

Thank you Lotus, I've received it. What happened is, last August I took over financial responsibility from Avian. As soon as I did, I began tracking patron donations. Now that it's been a year, I know who has and hasn't paid - and at some point in the future we may change the address of the 128K stream to force people to repay. But I had no visibility into patron donations prior to that.

Your tongue may be in cheek, but if you and/or dot can program it, I would seriously consider implementing it. Especially if we can do a "one free request per week"or something like that...

[
So you want to take money for requests - Good idea except I'm afraid the silent majority will then say "Fine - then why do I have to wait for at least 1 hour if not more to hear it being played? If I'm to pay then the station must at least give an accurate time when it plays"
Some will get pis***** off and say OK with me I'll go somewhere else, which could be an advantage.

This is not a criticism but just a thought. I don't request that much as I often miss it being played. (Although I like the doubbling idea !)

Haven't we better discuss another model and that is paying for being registered, which is necessary for requesting and listening to the 56 k.- Don't forget administering the request system as Vax describes will be a painfull time comsuming thing. It would be better to keep payments in larger chunks. I have before mentioned the fact that it shouldn't be absolutley free to be a member and clog the database.

I love no advertising but Cozy does have a couple of points worth looking into. I know from my sports world that being a minority makes it extremely hard to find sponsership money unless the owner himself is a complete prog nut.

I take my hat for Jim but when I first saw Cozy's note I was thinking perhaps in terms of a second server in Europe which could be a cheaper option. But I've dropped the idea as it would mean 2 different streams although it would save us a lot shipping costs donating any music.

o.k. guys...i've been self employed for..daaamn!..
i just realized..over half my life this year!haha

jim, i almost mentioned this when you were having
to wrestle w/ taxes.

you DO know, that whover holds the biz license for AM
(please tell me you have one...) can deduct expenses as
"biz startup" down to the pencils and gas to the office max...

i have a biz license as "zenpool". for that $20, i deducted
all my keys, computer and software this year, and received
a $7000 refund.
next year, the same stuff amortizes 10%, so $6700.
plus next year, i get to deduct the cost of replicating my cd,
my new mixer, roland fantom, and even the sq.ft of the
spare bedroom the equipment occupies as office space.
anything that pertains to the music biz.

the govt. says i "have to be showing an attempt to profit".
w/ 5 years grace to do so.
cdbaby, towerrecordsonline, weedshare does that.
"the shingle's out".
it's a simple matter to obtain a new license under a different
name at the end of the 5 years.

so, do that and the station's free after your being
reimbursed by the gub-ment. the more server space, the larger the refund.
oh yeah... DON"T DO YOUR OWN TAXES!
a good accountant makes and saves you $$,
much more than they cost.
besides, they have to go to court w/ you if you're ever audited.

ok...something to sell.....

k

Did I hear my name?
 

Although I am an accountant, I'm not privy to any of the financial workings of Aural Moon. Kirk's scenario is essentially correct, but it's not that easy, and it's not a one for one deal.

I'm under the assumption Jim has these things worked out. If not, I'm happy to help. I'm good, and for the Moon, I'm free.

and it's not a one for one deal-

no, it is! things like home improvements aren't ,
but if it's approached as a small business, all startup
expenses are deductible.
i deducted every dime back 5 years on my equipment,
amortized to the current going price.

jim just has to show he's attempting to make money.

k

all I meant was, each dollar deducted does not net you back a dollar in tax. I'm aware of all of the business deductions.

(at least we're not talking about King's X :p )